Sunday, 22 June 2008

stitch in time

Last week involved lots of stitching groupings and me with a nasty old cold, thus tolerance levels on all sides were tested.The Regional Embroiderers Guild arranged for volunteers to go to the Steam Engine Museum at Leiston and do some research, in the hopes that we would cough up a textile response for exhibition next Spring.I took a short cut by taking lots of pics and coughing up my own claggy immediate feed back, and then chugging off. Hopefully no-one got the lergy as a result.The cogs and wheels with a side order of spanners were nirvana to the patch workers, but I am not so sprauncy at bodging a perfect circle. However fortunately the Garretts who started the family business also spawned Millicent Fawcett and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson so hopefully a piece of purple and green and strong jawlines will evolve.Then we had a work shop on printing on textiles [not computers, pretty colours]. The tutor was muscular in her approach, much like her work. No shrinking violet here, not when raging scarlet can explode forth. She is of an age now when she would really rather we all pissed off, so she could get on with her own work. Her spine is bending, a physical expression of her frustrations? There is a time to teach, and there is a time when it gets old. However, presumably she needs the money, which she did give value for, if in a rather disgruntled way.She makes printing blocks from unlikely materials, and also runs a roller over them which transfers the pattern onto the roller whence it can be rolled off, until the colour runs out, on to the fabric. This all looks a bit garish, but the trick is then to brush dyes over the lot, which unifies everything and gives some startling colour effects.Finally I went to my stitching group where we are constructing Big Women, one each, larger than life. By now I was thoroughly disgruntled myself, or maybe I had been all along, so I left early, lugging "Gertrude" with me. She sits in the passenger seat quite comfortably [I don't let her drive - she has no head] no-one seems to notice.